Articles Tagged withseniors

It’s almost Christmas, so, in the holiday spirit, I’m taking a look at a difficult, Home-For-The-Holidays moment — you get home and realize that your parents just seem…. a little bit different, just not the same as they used to be–more forgetful, more agitated, or suddenly involved with people that you don’t know or trust.

Join me for a candid discussion with Dr. Elizabeth Landsverk, a board-certified physician in Internal medicine, Geriatric medicine, and Palliative care medicine. She’s also the founder of ElderConsult Geriatric Medicine, a practice that offers house-call based medicine to seniors and their families.

I recently read a Huffington post article about the need for women to plan their estates as if they were single. And that got me thinking about how, despite our best efforts to plan, life just has a way of constantly changing. Children grow up, we get old, and even families slip away, or change over time.

I work with families to craft estate plans all of the time, and it’s hard enough to get them to focus on the inevitability of death. Let alone the possibility that one of them is likely to survive the other, and live alone in old age. But from now on, I will try and do a better job to get that idea on the table, too.

Statistics tell us that it’s likely to be the woman who survives. According to a U.S. Census report, 80% of women will survive their husbands. And it’s pretty common knowledge that close to half of marriages ultimately fail.

If the answer to that question is, “N0!” you are in good company. A recent survey by Caring.com of 1,000 adults found that less than half of the adults surveyed (45.8%) knew where their parents’ documents were.

When asked if they even knew whether or not their parents had an estate plan in place, only about half (55.4%) said that they did.

When asked if they knew the contents of their parents’ estate plans, only 42% said that they knew what was in those plans.

This week, an elderly driver lost control of his car and crashed into a cafe on University Avenue in Palo Alto, injuring six, including himself. News reports say that the driver was trying to park, and accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal.

As we, or our parents, age, the question of when someone should stop driving is almost certain to come up. While it is true that impaired driving isn’t always a factor of age, it is also true that as we age our reactions slow, our vision declines, our hearing decreases, our flexibility and strength decline, cognitive and decision making ability changes, and our judgment about our ability to drive isn’t always objective.

Sometimes people can recognize their decline and voluntarily decide to stop driving. Sometimes family and friends have to step in and question whether or not it’s safe for someone to continue to drive. It is difficult for both the older driver and the family to discuss this issue, but the literature repeatedly warns families NOT to postpone the conversation because it is difficult or unpleasant. Instead, they should focus on safety and preventing accidents.

Podcasts

Call Liza at (669) 232-0872 with your podcast or blog questions, or suggestions for future blog posts or podcast episodes, or email lifedeathlawpodcast@gmail.com. I will answer your questions if I can on future posts or episodes.